When your youthful command of language
is not enough to convey
what swings its jaws inside you,
when you stand pulling from your shelf
volumes written by the great and inimitable—
names that inspire centuries of admiration,
minds that managed what you cannot,
their icy clarity pummeling you
like a stream of fists,
you of tremble and grief
and writhing weariness—
when your age prohibits you from expressing
your apocalyptic, purgatorial verve the way you want it,
you don’t stop trying,
you don’t stop trying,
you let the sun drop and rise
and then
you launch your body at this wall again,
you bruise yourself willingly and determinedly,
you throw your whole weight into the crash,
you work up a fury of hope, an improbable recklessness,
you keep going and going and going and going
never mind the blood in your mouth or bells in your ears
because you are the whale that beaches itself by choice
and you are right to be this way,
you are brave to keep looking for gold